Hm. Something of a Curate's Egg of a list: good in parts. Say what you like about whether or not it deserves to be number one, but PSBs are a fantastic band and that at least is a more interesting choice than just plumping for Jeff Buckley. His version of "Hallelujah" is good alright, but is it even the best version of that song? Isn't he covering the John Cale version of Leonard Cohen's song anyway? And where's Alexandra Burke on this list? Eh? Tell me that?

Speaking of erstwhile X-Factor winners, I see that Leona Lewis makes the top 20 with her cover of Snow Patrol’s “Run” whilst the Righteous brothers barely scrape up to number 21 with “Unchained Melody”? How can that be possible in a reasonable world?

Well, at least they didn’t finish underneath the Robson & Jerome version of the same song, I suppose. Perhaps this is the inevitable result of asking the general public what they think and then having the final list curated by luminaries like Fearne Cotton, Trevor Nelson, Simon Mayo and Steve Lamacq (although, to be fair, I very much doubt that Steve Lamacq will have voted for Leona... although I think the high placing of the Stranglers has his fingers all over it).

Naturally, reading this got me thinking about my own personal favourite list of covers. Hurt and Hallelujah probably go without saying, right? And All Along the Watchtower… but outside the original list, how about:

I’m pretty sure I could come up with hundreds more covers before I coughed up Leona Lewis, to be honest. Nothing against her particularly, but it’s not really pushing the envelope much, is it, and it certainly doesn’t improve on the original… shouldn’t that be one of the key criteria for a great cover version? (albeit even I would struggle to suggest that some of my own nominations are actually better than the originals, so it’s not the only criteria by any means)

Well, it whiles away the hours on a fairly tedious day at work anyway. Although, as I also discovered today, apparently I would include "Africa" by Toto in my list of Desert Island Discs, so what the hell do I know?